Many years later, as she breathed in fresh air under a new star, Colonel Mary Leigh Russell remembered a distant afternoon when her father had shown her aliens on TV.
She was playing with dolls, as many children do, when her father called from his workshop.
“Mary,” he asked, “Can you help with something?”
Mary slipped into slippers, walked to the workshop, weaved between shelves stuffed with books and gizmos and piles of ancient newspapers. An old television flickered on a desk in the corner, it’s screen distended from the faux-wood console.
“What do you think of that?” her father asked, pointing to the screen.
She sat in the office chair in front of the TV.
“I don’t know what that is,” she squinted at the screen. “It’s grainy. Did you break it?”
“No, no,” he said. Pulling up on a stool, he sat next to her. “That’s an old TV, right? Back then you could see the pixels without a microscope.”
“Got it!” she scooted closer.
“Oh! No. Don’t sit so close,” he said far too loud. “Sorry. It’s…not healthy.”
Pushing back her chair, she asked, “What is that?”
“Aliens, maybe?” He shrugged.
“They look like it.”
“Kind of crab-like.”
“But the fur!”
“Are there furry crabs?”
“I don’t know.”
They watched for a moment.
“Let’s pretend we’re scientists.” He stood, perfected posture, and addressed her formally. “Doctor.”
“Doctor,” she said, all super serious and stuff. She tried to keep her face still, but a giggle eeked out.
“Do we need a hypothesis?” Dad asked. “Tell me more about these guys.”
“Are you sure they’re boys, Doctor Dad?”
“Good point, Doctor Kid.”
“Mx. Thompson in Media Literacy told us about ‘priming.’”
“Is that what they’re teaching you in school?”
“Sometimes,” she said. “Do they have a head?”
“They look flat.” Dr Dad said, “Like a fat plate on stilts.”
She was quiet for a moment, still, then tilted her head. “I hear something. Are they talking?”
He upped the volume. The noises sounded silly at first, too silly, really.
She stopped, her face serious. “Wait, is this real? Is this from the Internet?”
“Excellent question. That media literacy, again?” He asked.
She nodded. “You can’t trust the Internet.”
“You can’t. But it is real. The technology is, like, 200 years old.” He shrugged. “I guess, in a big enough universe, everything is bound to happen twice.”
Self-satisfaction slid across his face.That’s clever.
For the next hour, Russell’s father and her watched the TV, talking about the aliens who would be called The Neighbors. They talked about the fur colors and patterns. They appeared unique. But not all of them had fur. They all did have, around their circular bodies, three sets of two limbs. The ones that did not have fur were mostly green with red spots.
They gestured with the limbs, some of which appeared to have various numbers of fingers and positioned.
Turning back to TV, a peculiar thing appeared: Bam Margera beating up his dad. Her dad looked horrified, as if someone had gone back decades through his social media feeds. Though, to the Margeras’ credit, how many humans have ever been the subject of extraterrestrial broadcasts?
At the left of the screen, a smattering of symbols scrolled rapidly down from the top. They both noticed it, but she was the one to ask, “Dad, does this mean they know about us?”
—
The next week, Mary’s entire school was called to the gym. Tablets were confiscated and everyone was to watch the President’s address. The president’s dark suit and plain backdrop and had been standard fare since politics in what used to be the United States made an aggressive turn toward minimalism in political decor and decorum since 2030s.
“My fellow Chicagoans, we have the answer to a question many people have asked over millennia. Are we alone in the universe? A few days ago, the universe was unfathomably vast; now we have stellar neighbors 18 light-years from Earth. Compared to many systems, Gliese 251 is in our ‘galactic back yard.’” They even did the finger-quote thing.
“Chat, always be aware of fake footage. Like many items on the Internet, frequencies shared may not be accurate or may point to artificially generated content. Check government Web Pages for verified frequencies.”
The president took a breath.
“Finally, we know now that humanity is not alone. But we also know they also know of us.”
Thankfully, since the first night, there were less embarrassing segments; the president chose a clip about one of their predecessors to share.
“Leaders all around the world are largely unified that We must remain united as humans. We must prepare for when we meet our neighbors, either by our choice, or theirs.”
“Thank you.”
—
Decades later, Mary Leigh Russell was sent by another President. And then, after decades more, she traveled the 20 light-years between the starts. And now Russell scanned an unfamiliar landscape for dust of The Neighbor’s hovercrafts.
“There it is,” someone said over the headset. “Due west.”
She turned and waited, for the last time, to meet the aliens her father had shown her. “Got it.”
She had been talking to several of The Neighbors on the approach, and everyone agreed it was promising. They appeared to be friendly, but there was always a chance it could go off the rails.
She allowed herself a moment to experience the world, ticking off her senses. It smelled like the playas in Outer Cascadia, decades ago and 18 light-years away. The mountains looked like normal mountains to Russell; but the mission’s geologists were ecstatic at the details. The horizon arced shallowly. The higher gravity pulled her down, leaving as if she had gained a half dozen kilos. The sky felt too large. A heavy wind across touched her like a stranger, unfamiliar after the journey across space.
Around a bluff appeared the vehicles, wide and squat to the ground. The sensory overload, the sense of history, and all the emotions buzzed with an intense low-frequency static of anxiety. She had to say the words she had written 10 years ago repeating until it became meaningless.
Then Russell spoke aloud to nobody, but also, eventually, to everybody, when the transmission made it to earth. “We will meet the Neighbors soon. Each of us takes a small step towards interstellar civilization, and together, we take a giant leap for both of our kinds.”
The hovercrafts slowed to a stop a dozen or so meters away, settling heavily into the ground. The dust made the new sun a vivid, deep, dark red, pasted in the sky like a wafer.
Part of a Series of Indeterminate Length and Density.
